


TMI

by Miko



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4392080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new Avengers team hasn't been settled into their new facility for a month, and they're already facing an internal disaster.</p><p>Or is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	TMI

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks as always to my amazing beta NocturnalRites!

“We’ve had five more cases report to the infirmary in the last twenty minutes,” Natasha said, scrolling through the information on her datapad. Steve walked alongside her, reading over her shoulder as they went.

“Whatever this is, it’s spreading fast,” she added. “We may have to quarantine the whole base, not just the people already displaying symptoms. I’ll contact the CDC…”

“It’s not a disease,” Steve interrupted her. “Probably not, anyway. So far there’s been a lot of discomfort, but nobody’s in critical condition.”

“How does that rule out a disease?”

“Because I’ve got it, too. Anything that could affect me should be devastating to anyone else.” Steve grimaced as his gut chose that moment to make another attempt at clawing through his abs. Mostly it was just a steady, grinding ache, but every so often it felt like that movie with the face-hugging aliens Sam had insisted he watch. The accompanying headache wasn’t exactly pleasant, either.

It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever felt, not by a long shot. But it was bad enough to be worrying, especially since the base doctors couldn’t find any sign of a cause and the number of people affected was piling up rapidly. Less than a month settled into their new facility, and already they were facing some kind of major disaster.

“Oh, damn.” Natasha stopped short and blinked at him, then shook her head. “You’re holding up better than Wilson and Rhodes. I thought Sam was going to cry for a minute there.”

“Trust me, it’s an effort,” he assured her through gritted teeth.

“If it’s hitting you, it would have to be some kind of super-virus,” she acknowledged, moving forward again. “The strange part is that the people getting it are almost exclusively men. Could it be food poisoning? Something that got served in the cafeteria that men like better than women?”

“Not sure I could get food poisoning that wouldn’t kill the rest of you, either,” Steve pointed out. They were passing by the door to the lounge the Avengers had appropriated for their own use, and he gestured for her to wait. “Hang on a second, I’ve gotta get some water or something.”

When he went inside, however, he found something more worrying than his own pain. Wanda was curled up in a corner of one of the couches, and she was giving an excellent demonstration of the definition of miserable. “Maximoff? You look like hell.”

“I feel about like that,” she muttered, opening her eyes to look up at him blearily.

“Shit, did you get hit by it too?” Natasha asked, coming in behind him when she heard him address their teammate.

“Hit by what?”

“There’s some kind of intestinal disorder spreading through the base,” Steve told her, worried. It looked like she might be one of the worst cases yet. “If you’ve got symptoms, you should go to the infirmary.”

To his surprise she huffed a soft laugh. “I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference right now.”

“Difference?” he repeated, confused. “Difference from what?”

Natasha made a little sound, a sort of distressed wheeze of air. When he glanced behind him he saw she was leaning over with one hand on her mouth and the other over her stomach. “Nat, are you okay? Did it hit you that quickly?” So far there hadn’t been any cases with a sudden onset, and if the pattern was changing that was especially concerning.

He reached out to brace her shoulder, worried she’d fall over if it was that bad, but she waved him off with the hand that had been over her stomach. A moment later she straightened and dropped the other… revealing a wide smile. The noises she’d been making that he’d thought were gasps of pain morphed into all out laughter.

Nonplussed, Steve stared at her. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her laugh that hard, and this hardly seemed the time for it. Was she hysterical with pain? “What’s so funny?”

“I know what’s wrong,” she said, calming a bit and wiping tears from her eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s not life-threatening. Everyone will be fine. It’s not even that hard to solve.”

“Well, what _is_ it?” Steve demanded when no further information seemed forthcoming.

“It’s not that the women haven’t been getting hit,” she explained. Moving to the cupboard where they kept a fairly extensive first aid supply, Natasha grabbed one of the chemical heating packs. “With the way you boys have been carrying on, our symptoms didn’t seem bad enough to be the same thing, so most of us haven’t been reporting it.” 

Breaking the seal on the heating pack, she shook it hard to activate the chemicals and start it warming. “We’re used to dealing with it, that’s all. I just assumed I was a week early, but that’s not so unusual. I did wonder why I wasn’t bleeding yet, though.”

“ _Bleeding_?” Steve repeated, shocked. Why the hell would she be…

Wait.

No.

Oh God, no.

“Here,” Natasha said, offering the heat pack to Wanda with a sympathetic smile. “Hold it low on your stomach, it always helps me.”

“Ugh, I’ll try anything,” Wanda said, reaching for it eagerly.

“You also might want to stop projecting at the whole base,” Natasha added, patting her on the shoulder.

“What?” Wanda looked surprised, and then dismayed. “Oh, no!” Closing her eyes, she concentrated hard, the red glow of her powers flaring.

And the pain in Steve’s gut and head vanished.

It was an effort not to gasp at the sudden relief. “That was coming from _you_?” No wonder Wanda looked like hell, since what she was projecting likely hadn’t been the whole of it.

“Now we know why everyone was getting into fights last week, too,” Natasha commented, smirking at his discomfort and horror as she dropped into the seat next to Wanda. “The entire population of the base suffering PMS all at once? We’re lucky nobody died.”

“I am so, so sorry,” Wanda moaned, hiding her face in her hands. “I didn’t know I was doing it.”

“I think you get a pass on this one,” Natasha assured her. “Just try to lock it down next month.”

Steve’s mind was spinning. He knew what PMS was, though in his time they’d called it ‘female hysteria’ or other terms unflattering to the women who suffered from it. Like most of the men he knew, though, he’d avoided any in-depth discussion of the whole phenomenon.

“You go through this _every month_?” he exclaimed. He’d never been the kind of guy who assumed it was all in the woman’s head – his mom had made damn sure of that – but he’d had no idea how bad it could get.

“For up to a week at a time,” Natasha reminded him in an overly sweet tone. Steve shuddered at the thought. A day had been more than long enough.

“Some months are worse than others,” Wanda added with a sigh.

“Please tell me that was considered bad,” Steve all but begged. If that was what a _good_ month felt like, how the hell did women ever get any work done that week?

Natasha grinned at him. “You know, there may be a positive side to this experience. Something tells me the men on the base are going to be more sympathetic in the future.”

Wanda snickered, almost a giggle, while Steve winced. She was probably right. And God, they deserved the sympathy.

“Oh!” Natasha exclaimed, turning to Wanda with her eyes alight. “I know what we should do. Abduct all those medical researchers who would be able to find a solution if they weren’t writing it off as unimportant.”

“You mean, like the men who invented Viagra?” Wanda replied, laughing outright now. “Because that was such a medical priority.”

“Exactly.” Natasha nodded triumphantly. “We’ll lock them in one of the lab rooms here, and you can pick whichever woman is having the worst cramps that day and project it at them. They’ll have the problem solved in no time.”

Steve was pretty sure she was kidding. But not entirely. “ _You_ get to make the announcement to the base about what’s been going on,” he told her, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole.”

“Typical man,” Natasha rolled her eyes. “Mention your monthlies and he runs the other way.”

“Baby,” Wanda teased him. “Men think they’re so tough.”

“Credit where credit is due, at least Steve was sucking it up and doing his job anyway,” Natasha allowed. “Not whining in the infirmary with everyone else. He didn’t even complain… much.”

“Okay, I’m getting the hell out of this conversation before I dig myself any deeper,” Steve declared, backing away towards the door, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

“I thought you didn’t know the meaning of ‘backing down’?” Natasha asked him.

“This is a strategic retreat,” Steve retorted. “Not the same thing.”

“Oh, go rework the duty roster or something,” Natasha gave in, still grinning. “The poor men are going to need some time to recover.”

“And they’re never going to live it down,” Wanda added, snickering again.

As he fled the room, their laughter echoed behind him. The few people in the corridor gave him strange looks when they heard it, since as far as everyone else was concerned they were still in the middle of a disaster. Steve could feel his cheeks prickling with the heat of embarrassment, and he just shook his head. No way was he trying to explain.

He did kind of want to see the looks on the faces of all the guys in the infirmary when Natasha made the announcement, though.


End file.
